In-depth explanation of backlinks and why you need to start taking them seriously

A backlink in its simplest definition is a link on another site that LINKs BACK to your site/blog. The link may be to the home page, inner pages, document or any other type of file like an image, sound or video. As long as the link is sitting somewhere on the other site where it can be accessed by human visitors or search engine bots, it’s a backlink.

Backlinks can also be referred to by the following names

Incoming Links

In-bound Links

In-Links

Inward Links.

The more the number of (good) backlinks you get for your site, the better for it. A backlink on a site that is highly-rated would even “weigh” more. It would earn you more points in your PageRank and general rating of your site, which can potentially put your site on page one (1) of search results.

Check your site on alexa.com and you would see a section titled “What sites link to <put your site here>?”. In this section, all other sites linking to your site (as detected by alexa) would be listed. If you check your site on Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) as well, you would be able to view all the backlinks of your site that Google has detected. After selecting your website in GWT, go to the “Search Traffic” menu and then the “Links to Your Site” sub-menu to view your site’s backlinks.

WHAT BACKLINKS CAN DO FOR YOUR WEBSITE/BLOG

The likelyhood of Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines indexing your site/pages also increase with more backlinks to your site. Come to think of it, search engines only get to know about your site when they encounter a link to it somewhere.

Furthermore, a backlink placed on a page of a site with a high PageRank, would also increase the PageRank of your site as that implies that you have something to offer that the high-PageRank site is willing to stake their integrity on to link to you.

Visitors to any of the sites where your backlink exists can also find your link and click it thereby bringing them to your site, which is of course more traffic for your site.

HOW DO I GET BACKLINKS FOR MY SITE?
Backlinks can be gained in a number of ways, but as it is with anything you do, some methods are more effective than others.

Listed below are the common methods people use to create backlinks

Guest post: After agreeing with another website/blog owner on terms, you can write an article to be posted on the other site and of course, you would be able to insert links into the article that would point readers of your article to your blog. Depending on the agreed terms, the post can even be pinned for a period of time so that the post would appear at the top of other posts.

Article marketing/e-zine Publishing: This is a bit similar to “Guest post” above, but in this case, you would be posting to an online e-magazine (eg. ezinearticles.com) that accepts original and well-written articles from the public. When you write very good and informative articles and leave your audience wanting more, they would easily follow the links in your article to your website to get more from you.

Blog commenting: You can leave meaningful comments on other sites/blogs and then add a link to your own site to the comments.

Forum interaction: Make meaningful contributions on forums that you belong to and add a link to your site to your signature, which of course appears with every post or comment you drop on the forum.

Link exchange: You can engage in link exchange with another site owner in which case you both add link(s) to one another’s site.

If you like this post or if you know of other methods of gaining backlinks, please drop a comment.

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18 Comments

I recently learnt the importance of backlinks and so far, I must say I have seen a difference. I started commenting more on other peoples blogs as well as interact with bloggers as well as people on blogs(comment section). People like when their work is noticed and appreciated and in most cases will do the same for you.

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thanks for this important info..it helps alot,I cant stop commenting on people’s blog/site..but sometimes when i drop my site url on a blog,it wont be active like displaying with blue color.whats the cause sir